2. How did I gather my audiences
feedback? What methods did I
use ?
From looking at the statistics on Youtube, I was able to retrieve some audience
feedback. This was interesting as it showed me who and what regions and
countries in the world had been viewing the video. As well as which genders had
been viewing it more. My group and I also made a questionnaire, which also gave
us some good feedback. One thing that I strongly noticed, was that most people
miss understood the plot line through out the music video, especially towards the
ending. Most people interpreted that who ever lost the card game had to deal with
the frozen body. Another common viewing was they thought the person thrown in
the car was the other card holder. This was very miss leading to the audiences.
Here is a video of a group of girls discussing what they thought of the media
product. Giving my group members and I audience feedback.
Discussion of the media product
4. How did the demographic or
psychographic profile of your
audience affect the kinds of
readings they produced?
After looking at the statistics, I was very much surprised to see that there were
more females viewing the music video than males. This was shocking to me as I
was assuming the video was more based and pointing more towards to a male
gender audience, of the ages around 30. From a stereotypical view we were
correct to think that males would rather like the video more than women, being
there an action story line. This was shocking and interesting to see that the target
audience was fairly based more towards females.
5. What were the advantages/disadvantages to using
these sources? How reliable did I find the information
and the key points raised.
Using the focus group had helped me gain some advantages by
gaining information from people who had seen the video, getting
each of their individual feed back. Their feedback was very helpful,
and it was interesting to see what they thought of the main
performance and narrative in the music video. You can quite
easily see that the music video is more narrative than
performance, which most of the feedback viewers enjoyed.
6. What strengths did the
feedback indicate to
your music video?
I believe the main strengths was the Setting. Especially
with the location, because we went to extra work for
getting filming permission in the meat butchers in
Cranleigh. This was making our pop music video more
intriguing to the audience.
7. What weaknesses did
the feedback indicate to
your audience
As mentioned before, from most of our feedback that we got
back was the ending of the music video with the narrative.
Some had no idea what was going on with the plot line, while
others had misinterpreted it. Our fault with this was not making
it clear enough that the card came was about who kept the
frozen body in the butchers. This could be changed and helped
by making the cuts in the editing sequence very easy to follow,
following an easy story line in a easy linear order.
Another weakness was that we were missing particular
instruments in the band performance. For example, we didn't
have any one to play the brass section, this could have
included three more people to take part in the production.
8. Explain the encoding/decoding model
in relation to your music video?
The encoding model was to do with the production side of
the music video, and what we wanted to present to the
audiences. The blues style we gave the band was also
mixed with the musical style indie rock. This was done by
Mise En Scene values, by using costumes of suits, hats
and braces. Making the performers look of an older age.
Decoding is how the audience had interpreted the music
video. You can clearly see that the audience didn't quite
understand the narrative, and each persons we asked
had a different view of how the story had ended. Though
this was a major problem, the story line they saw wasn't
such a bad thing. It still worked nicely, just not what I and
my group wanted it to be seen as.
9. Applying the gratification theory to
my response
The genre of this had a large role of an action take theme,
as well as including thriller suspense in the narrative of the
music video. From the feed back that I got back they said
the narrative being somewhat violent worked very well.
Though the males were able to identify with the whole
aspect a little more than the females.
We found out that the people viewing the music video and
didn't understand it, was because this type of genre wasn't
their favourite, as in their type of genre of music is more in
the stereotypical pop culture. Where as the males
understood it more, as they're passions are action, thriller
types.
10. What readings were produced by your
audience that were preferred,
negotiated or oppositional ?
The audience who consumed the music video thought
especially that the performance of the music video
worked extremely well. The outfits were setting the
correct vibe to the song, and the vocalist (Ted) was old
enough to sound as if we was singing it himself, not just
lip syncing.
The narrative was certainly the aspect that got
negotiated. Many found it confusing and difficult to follow.
Though this wasn't such a bad scenario, as they just saw
the ending in a different way, than my group members
and I had done.
11. What conclusions have you
reached? What have you learned?
What I have learned from making this music video is that
presenting a narrative in a music video if done, has to be visually
easy to follow, obviously there is no dialogue, which can make it
harder to create a storyline or narrative. This being said, we did
manage to accomplish this in certain ways, because the story line
was suspenseful, it allowed the audience to be eager to see the
ending of the music video. Though for a future conclusion a
smaller narrative would have helped accordingly.
The style presented a very Bluesy feel, which was excellent, it
displayed itself nicely with the set design and especially with the
costumes that were chosen.